A gas turbine engine generally includes, in serial flow order, a compressor section, a combustion section, a turbine section and an exhaust section. In operation, air enters an inlet of the compressor section where one or more axial or centrifugal compressors progressively compress the air until it reaches the combustion section. Fuel is mixed with the compressed air and burned within the combustion section to provide combustion gases. The combustion gases are routed from the combustion section through a hot gas path defined within the turbine section and then exhausted from the turbine section via the exhaust section.
In particular configurations, the turbine section includes, in serial flow order, a high pressure (HP) turbine and a low pressure (LP) turbine. The HP turbine and the LP turbine each include various rotatable turbine components such as a rotor shaft, rotor disks mounted or otherwise carried by the rotor shaft, turbine blades mounted to and radially extending from the periphery of the disks, and various stationary turbine components such as stator vanes or nozzles, turbine shrouds, and engine frames. The rotatable and stationary turbine components at least partially define the hot gas path through the turbine section. For example, the gas turbine buckets or blades generally have an airfoil shape designed to convert the thermal and kinetic energy of the flow path gases into mechanical rotation of the rotor. As the combustion gases flow through the hot gas path, thermal energy is transferred from the combustion gases to the rotatable and stationary turbine components. Such gas turbine engines are commonly employed on an aircraft.
During operation, turbine blades can be damaged by ingestion of various substances, e.g. ice ingestion, which can be difficult and expensive to repair. More specifically, such ingestion can cause blade tip or leading/trailing edge damage which includes local tip bending. To repair such damage using conventional methods, large bending tools are used which require certain individual gas turbine components to be removed from the gas turbine assembly. In some instances, the gas turbine engine may have to be removed from the wing of the aircraft. Thus, such repairs can be time-consuming and expensive.
In view of the aforementioned, an improved system and method for in-situ (i.e. on-wing) repairing of turbine blade would be advantageous. More specifically, a system and method for repairing of turbine blade using a local in-situ repair tool would be desired in the art.